


Doors Sealed to Love

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2009, Episode: The Rapture, Gen, Season: four
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-24
Updated: 2011-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-26 12:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean should have let his family go, put a bullet in his own head, after, and be done with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doors Sealed to Love

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted [here](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/163138.html).]

The day keeps dragging Dean back to the dream. A place of silence and quiet and blood-red leaves on the trees. It must be Fall.

The warehouse is shredded in darkness, all shades of grays.

Jimmy is going to die: there's so much blood on his stomach, red and sluggish against the stark whiteness of his shirt, on the paleness of his hands. There's so much blood around Sam's mouth, sliding slowly on his chin, along his neck.

Dean's hands curve around Amelia's shoulder, black smoke sizzling around her, still. The stench of sulfur hits Dean's nostrils, but it's the blood that covers everything with its coppery, sickly familiar scent. He's still flinching, even as he helps Amelia to stand, even as she shrugs him off to go to her family, to her husband, who's dying on the dirty floor – where are they? Dean can't even remember that.

He looks up at Sam, standing still, arm stretched, hand open, like he's waiting to grab something that's going to appear out of thin air. Sam's face still retains some resemblance of the person Dean remembers as his brother, not around the eye, which are hard and dark, not around the mouth, smeared red like some ancient, bloodthirsty god. It's all memories, then, sounds Dean can barely hear and Sam's dejected tone in the car, and Sam admitting he's scared. Just a glimpse Dean has to grab with both his hands, his own fingers slippery with failure.

And Dean's still afraid, his own body recoiling. Afraid _of_ Sam, afraid _for_ Sam.

Not a new feeling. Sam's always scared Dean, even when he was a tiny thing and his father thrust his baby's body into his hands. Sam smelled of talc then, not of blood. But Dean was afraid, afraid that the flames would follow him on the stairs and snatch him from Dean's hands, and now the flames have finally caught up with Sam. With Dean. What a fucking useless run.

He watches Castiel kneel at Jimmy's side. He can't help feeling reassured by Castiel's presence, admitting, finally, that he'd been worried, that he'd gotten used to his shaky support.

That in his doubts, Dean had found help.

He looks at Castiel's little girl hands on Jimmy's head so he doesn't have to look at Sam wiping his blood-smeared face on his shirtsleeve.

He's feeling it, as it builds, low rumble of thunder in the hollow under his ribs, rolls in the memories. Sam breathes so loudly, like he's been racing for miles, the same wetness of it, humid with sweat after a day of sparring in the sun; heaving breaths around large smiles. I won, Sam said. Says.

In the dream, darker shapes rise up from the depth of the lake. Hands, palms turned heavenward, fingers stretch toward the surface, fat and distorted under the water. The nails are long, like claws.

Then Castiel is promising a home, a true home, to Jimmy, and Dean leans in to listen better. But it turns out Jimmy's only listening to the pull of his own blood, and maybe when he's watching Castiel, all he's seeing is his girl and the life she's supposed to get.

There's no higher purpose for Jimmy anymore.

-*-

Castiel's refusal is a slap in the face. Last falling piece of Dean's trembling defense. Not unexpected. But then, Dean thinks, there's been a glaringly lack of promises from Castiel and his God. Only ominous threats of a bleak future.

-*-

In the dream, Dean's watching the movement under the flat surface of the lake. He stands until he's casting a long shadow on it. Weird, because there's no sun to block with his body, no source of light he's blocking.

They leave the warehouse in the rear mirror as fast as they can. Amelia is sobbing in the backseat, her body completely wrapped around Claire so that Dean can't tell them apart even when other cars' headlights hit them from behind. They're a unit.

Sam's tense beside him, shoulders at ear level. Like he's waiting for a blow, like he's expecting Dean to scream and fight and hit him. Dean's so tired, he can't even work up the energy to say a single word, let alone fight the way Sam's expecting him to fight. And there's this part of him, this dark part, that would rather see Sam dead than have to watch him drink arterial blood from a demon-possessed woman. There's this part of him that knows he should have let it go, let Sam go, when he had the chance.

On that one thing, Sam was dead right. Dean should have let his family go, put a bullet in his own head, after, and be done with it.

He sees a sign for a motel blinking like a pink beacon in the black fields. It's a moonless night, and the darkness is creeping everywhere. He heads there, eases the car into the parking lot. He tells nobody in particular to stay in the car and he's out, chasing the stench that clings to his nostrils with a deep breath of fresh air.

Getting two rooms asks for brain functions he's not sure he has, small mercy that the motel has low standards and the clerk is only half-awake. Dean checks his watch and finds it's only a quarter past midnight, walks quietly back to the Impala. He throws the keys to Sam, who's leaning against the passenger door, all tight and coiled. Fight or flight. And it hits him there, that this is the Sam he knows, but it's only shell and no substance.

In the dream, the water is murky, washed out and gray like the sky. Fishes are floating on its oily surface, belly up, their eyes glazed over. Dead.

He needs to make the room safe, even for a night, for a few hours. For Amelia and her daughter, for the only things Jimmy held holy and sacred. Salt from the trunk, shotgun and holy water and they're fucking useless, that's what they are, but he lies careful lines of salt on the doorsills and doesn't look at them sitting on the same bed. He tells them to try to rest for a couple of hours and he's gone before he can be stopped, he can be asked and held accountable, before he has to admit that their suffering is all his fault and then fall on his knees and ask for their forgiveness, knowing he doesn't deserve any.

Sam's standing in the middle of their room, and their eyes meet through the window. It's like watching him through a mirror, everything is twisted backward and unfit. There's no salt on the windowsill.

Dean doesn't enter. Walks swiftly toward the end of the building where the light from the pink sign can't follow him. He stops in the dark, considers his options, knows they are zero. No angels to pray to, no God he can trust to help him. No Sam. No Sam anymore.

The trash can is an easy target. And the wall. Kicks against a surface that won't bend, won't break, won't spill any blood. Rhythmic thud of his boots against bricks and metal, one two, three and he keeps counting until he's sweating and heaving and feeling like his lungs will explode from the lack of air, keeps doing it until his shirt is soaked and his face is wet, beyond that, until his muscles scream and burn.

-*-

Nothing changes. In the end, Sam's still turning into a monster. In the end, it's still all Dean's doing.

-*-

When Dean's done talking – explaining -, Bobby says it's the worst idea Dean's ever had. Dean's just glad that his voice doesn't break over the phone. Wonders how that's possible when everything else is breaking, every single bone shattering.

Bobby says yes.

Dean walks back slowly to the room Sam's standing in. The sweat cools on his back.

-*-

In Dean's dream, there's only silence all around, like he's the last man on earth. He's standing on the very edge of the dock, and the water is dark because the sun is veiled, hidden behind milky clouds. He exhales, plunges in, head first, eyes wide open.

\--


End file.
